It’s during recovery following hard training that
the body makes the changes that improves our performance in a race or
in training. These changes can result in fat-burning enzyme increases,
decreases in body fat, increase the ability of the heart to pump more
blood (increased heart stroke volume) stronger muscles and tendons,
and more glycogen stored in the body. After hard exercise, the focus
should be on recovery, and this is the most important thing you can do
in training to perform at higher levels. But this is the part of
training that most of us get wrong. We don’t recover enough and end up
burning out or not reaching our full potentials.
1. Weekly recovery. Each week there should be hard and easy days. We
can't train hard every day with no recovery breaks and perform to the
highest level when needed, not even elite athletes can do it without
recovery.
2. Monthly recovery. You must recover at least every third or fourth
week, but the recommendation is after every two weeks of hard work
efforts
3. Yearly recovery. After race periods you must recover and rest, we
call these “Transition” periods and the purpose of these low volume,
low intensity periods is to allow your body to rebuild and your mind
to rejuvenate before starting another period of hard training.
Want to ride with us? See
our group rides area for more information.
